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A toast to the Christmas day workers

The news is slow in the Missourinet newsroom today. We hope it stays that way. It’s Christmas, after all, and the roads are pretty quiet and the businesses are closed, and we hope folks are gathered around with friends and relatives sharing the day in some way.

Some of us are at work today. Wish we weren’t. Nobody wants to work on a day like this. But news doesn’t take the day off. Several years ago we remember a big Christmas eve oil spill just a few miles from our newsroom. Things fall from the sky. Things come together on the uncrowded roads. Things catch fire. Good things happen, too. So we operate the newsroom in hopes we can tell you those stories.

There are people in the sixty or so radio stations that carry our programs and commercials today, playing the Christmas music and making sure the programs you listen to all the other days of the year are there for you, even on Christmas day

If something catches fire, people who spend this day in your local firehouses will be ready to put it out, hopefully without injury to you or very serious damage.

If vehicles come together on our quiet roads today, men and women in police cars and ambulances will be there to help. Others are at our hospitals because illness and injury know no holidays.

Men and women are watching our prisoners; some are helping them through what is a difficult day for many inmates.
Thousands of Missourians got up today and put on their camouflage uniforms, or their other military clothing, and are working to keep our nation free. Unlike most of us who are in our newsrooms or hospitals or squad rooms, they won’t be going home when their shift ends. Home is halfway around the world.

Men and women are caring for those in our nursing homes and our mental health facilities. Many of those workers and many of their clients wonder if a familiar face will walk through the door to visit today.

Tomorrow you might have a newspaper on your porch or in your driveway because some people have worked today to make sure one is published.

And there are many, many more–all of us pretty much invisible because those who usually work with us are not here or are not out on the streets to see us at work. But if you need us, we’re a phone call or a radio dial-click away. Or as close as the “on” button on your TV remote.

There is kind of an unofficial brotherhood and sisterhood among those who work on Christmas Day. We are members of the Society of Somebody Has To Do It. It was our turn this year, that’s all.

We lift our plastic cup of cranberry juice as a toast to all of those other members of the Society. Thanks for being here. And there.